Coastal Pacific train from Picton to Christchurch

I wrote about being on board the Interislander ferry and crossing New Zealand’s Cook Strait from Wellington on the North Island to Picton on the South Island.

There are cheaper or faster ways to travel between Wellington and Christchurch. But I love boats, and I love trains. So, an alternative is a trip with KiwiRail Scenic Journeys, combining boat and train. After 3.5 hours, the ferry across Cook Strait arrives in Picton at 1140am. I make my way out of the ferry terminal, and walk the short path to the train station nearby. My luggage on the ferry is automatically transferred onto the train, as I’ve paid for both legs of the trip in its entirety.

At 1pm, the Coastal Pacific train trundles out of Picton for the 5-plus hour journey to Christchurch, with key stops in Blenheim and Kaikoura. Ahead are smooth rolling hills; green meadows; salt flats (at Lake Greenmere); the rugged and snaking Pacific coastline around which the train tracks cling; and finally, the emergence of the towering Kaikoura mountains, “merely” the northern extension of the much taller mountain range to the south.

Early-winter skies are dark as our train arrives a little before 630pm at the southern terminus in Christchurch. People shuffle onto the platform, I dig out my contact information, and I hop into a taxi to the place I’m staying.

Ferry, train, first sighting of the Southern Alps: it’s another glorious day in New Zealand.

Disclosure: No Connection, Unpaid, My Own Opinions. I have not received compensation for this post, and I have no material connection to Kiwi Rail or Tourism New Zealand. I made the photos above on 14 July 2012. This post is published on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-2po.

11 Responses to “Coastal Pacific train from Picton to Christchurch”

I like your sentence “just another day in New Zealand”. The number of huge mountains can be overwhelming sometimes. Their sheer height was just something I’m not used to. I realised just how wide, brown and flat Australia really is.

Hi, Leanne. I wrote “just another day in New Zealand” to mean the opposite of that! I was very lucky, I feel lucky that the weather was sunny and clear for most of the time I was in New Zealand; the South Island was an incredible experience and left indelible impressions. I would love to go back to New Zealand and spend even more time on each of the two islands. Thanks for your comment!

Hi, Christina. OK now I’m envious you’re going back! Then again, I would be envious of anyone going to New Zealand. 🙂

An advantage of the train is having someone else drive, being able to walk between carriages, and there’s even running commentary about scenery, locations, history, etc. An advantage of driving a hired car is stopping everywhere on demand to make photographs; this in turn can also be a “disadvantage”, as I’d be stopping a lot!

Hi, and thanks! I did two of three available train journeys with KiwiRail; I’ll have another upcoming post on the second journey, which was an east-to-west crossing over the South Island. I hope you can hop on a train when you’re in New Zealand!

Hey, Erik. Clearly, there are advantages and disadvantages to taking the train or hiring one’s own vehicle. I’d like to think the advantages of taking the train outweigh the disadvantages. In a car, I would stop everywhere and it would take forever to reach my intended destination. 🙂